Saturday, 22 April 2017

Just one of those evenings when you need to fiddle with something, but inspiration has escaped and ran down the road.

I went to search through my laptop for my "things I must try" list and found nothing that inspired me there. But then, accidentally, I clicked on the icon for my Cross-Stitch designer - I used to design and sell the odd Cross-Stitch pattern about 12 years ago.

So I was browsing through them when I found a group of Farmyard Animals that I had done. after a little editing, I printed out a pattern suitable for a C2C panel. I went and dug some yarn out of my stash and got to work.

Can you tell what it is yet? Oh yeah, a Duck - because I told you that already!

I put a photo on my Facebook page and got all sorts of random answers - a Mario Mushroom, Angry Birds, Pokemon, Christmas Tree (!!), Dragon.... I can see where most of them were coming from.

Oh, and an eye appears.

Ahhh, and then we have a Duck... but also a huge issue! I ran out of yarn!! And as it was from my stash, and unbanded, I have no idea what it was or where it was from. It is a strange lillacy blue colour too so no hope of matching it.

So, now I am deciding whether to pull it all out, just put it in the bin, or add a totally different coloured corner.

Friday, 21 April 2017

It was a good while ago that I made "The Everest Blanket" for artist Derek Eland.

Each section of the blanket was taken from a photograph that Derek took whilst he was "Artist on Everest"

I crocheted four rows in each sitting, using the colours from one photo at a time.

The split photos before show the photo of Derek's that I worked from along side the crochet I created from those colours that jumped out at me.

And then it was done! A riot of glorious colour. If I had have told you I was making a blanket based on colours from the photos taken on Mount Everest, would you have expected it to be so colourful? No, me neither. White, grey and blue I expected.

As I say, it has been a while since I made this and it has now gone to it's new home in Derek's house, but there is an exhibition of Derek's amazing work on Everest. It is at Rheged and is on from SATURDAY 29 APRIL – SUNDAY 2 JULY 2017l

If you can, do take the time to go and see it, it is free entry and I am sure it will blow you away.